All Swell at Camberwell - Women in trousers at the town hall shock (1941)

'All Swell' - 'an unofficial bulletin published monthly by the Camberwell Branch of Nalgo for the special benefit of members serving with the Forces... Edited by David Leggatt, Food Office, Wilson's Grammar School, Peckham Road'. The motto of the old Camberwell Council  - now incorporated into Southwark Council - was ‘All’s well’, so the Union was playing on this. NALGO, the National Association of Local Government Officers, became part of Unison.

Anyway the big news in November 1941 was that the ‘the town hall saw for the first time women members of staff wearing trousers’.  This was something the author approved of: 'trousers are more hard wearing than stockings and more economical at the present time; by their use, women save both coupons and money. It follows then that fewer stockings mean more tanks for Russia'

 [original document is in Southwark Archives]